1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a working situation management apparatus for processing information in a single terminal or between a plurality of terminals, and for managing information in accordance with the working situation of a user.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a network conference system which supports cooperative working such as conference and decision making by exchanging various kinds of information in real time has been proposed and constructed. For example, such systems are proposed in Warabe et al., "Multimedia Distributed Conferencing System: MERMAID", Journal of Information Processing Society of Japan, Vol. 32, No. 9 (1991), and Nakayama etal., "Multiparty Telecommunicating system: ASSOCIA", Journal of Information Processing Society of Japan Vol. 32, No. 9 (1991).
According to the conventional technique, one of the participants opens a window for personal use or for exchanging information between a plurality of terminals. Then, the participant edits and/or presents conference materials (i.e., documents including texts, images and graphics) in the window for a unit of document files. Therefore, after the conference, the participant has only the memorandum of the conference and the conference materials as the minutes of the conference. Dynamic information which is difficult to be handled systematically, such as the progress of a conference situation can not be left as the minutes of the conference (for example, the dynamic information includes such information as positional change of a finger of a participant who indicates the materials displayed by a camera with the finger). In view of the support of a user's memory, the conventional method is not sufficient.
In another method, a VTR or the like is used for recording the progress of the conference situation. If all the progress of the conference is captured by the VTR or the like, a huge amount of information is generated. Accordingly, after the conference, the user has a lot of trouble in performing the retrieval and editing of the captured video and voice information.
In addition, the purpose of a conventional CAI (computer-aided instruction) system is to commonly use the instructional aid materials between the teacher and the students, so as to provide a chance for conversation. Accordingly, by the conventional CAI system, it is difficult for a student to remember the contents of conversation from a personal viewpoint, and it is difficult for the teacher to create instructional aid materials which reflects the contents of previous conversation.